FORTY YEARS, ONE BENCH

The earliest modifications were small. Different pickups. Re-wired selector switches that did things the factory hadn't even considered. A handful of tone capacitors swapped in and out, listening for the one that finally let the guitar sit where I wanted it to.

This wasn't chasing a particular tone, just trying to understand why the same six strings, in the same room, could feel completely different depending on a few pence worth of components.

Modifying turned into building. First from parts; a body, a neck, some other bits pulled together. Then learning real skills like levelling and crowning frets, then full refrets. Eventually, building my own bodies and necks, shaped from blanks and finished by hand.

Wood became as interesting as the wiring inside it. Two skills that would both evolve and meet again later.

Pedals were the next obsession. I started by cloning the classics; the boxes you have to build to understand why they sound the way they do; and once enough of those were on the bench, designing original circuits stopped feeling like a leap.

That same curiosity rolled straight into synthesiser modules. Module by module, I built up an analogue audio vocabulary: filters, VCAs, summing amplifiers, the small everyday miracles that sit between the signal and the speaker.

From synth modules I drifted into other audio equipment like mixers, and from there into small lo-fi amplifiers. Lo-fi turned into hi-fi before, what felt at the time like the huge leap, to teaching myself how thermionic valves actually work. Understanding bias, load lines and transformers, so I could finally build guitar amps the way I'd been listening to them for thirty years.

My first amp was a single-ended EL34, loosely based on a Fender Princeton. It sounded wonderful and, more importantly, it taught me a solid foundation in how these glowing things need to be treated.

My second amp was already my own design. It didn't sound great to begin with, but I lived with it, modified it, lived with it again, and over time it became a really nice sounding device. That second amp taught me everything about tone in an amp — about hearing what's wrong, then experimenting to fix it.

Today the bench has many kinds of work on it — faithful recreations of vintage circuits like a '64 Vibroverb or a Dumble Overdrive Special, alongside amps of my own design.

My amp heads are usually built from hardwoods such as oak and walnut. I put a huge amount of effort into ensuring the visuals of the amps are as good as their tone. Every amp leaves the bench as one piece of work — electronics and cabinet together.

For most of this time, making things has been a hobby alongside my day job. The amps and pedals I've built have never looked like amateur builds though, I've always put loads of effort into ensuring the build quality and the tone hold their own.

Over time I started realise other people might appreciate my work, and the idea of Northstage was born. It's taken me quite a while, but after forty years of tinkering and four years of dreaming, I'm finally starting to turn this into a reality.

In July 2026 I'll be exhibiting at the Brighton Guitar Show — pedals and amps, on a small stand, in a room full of people I'd very much like to meet.